Book review | 'Kids These Days'

Critics are raving about the humor in novelist Drew Perry's "Kids These Days" (Algonquin, 320 pp./$14.95), and it's true that Perry captures ironies and absurdities so well that he's created a page turner sure to amuse. But the author's focus is his protagonist's serious angst and alienation as he struggles to make sense of and peace with the seismic ethical and emotional shifts he confronts and navigates solo, without benefit of an actual or psychological parachute.

Walter, who bears more than a passing resemblance to Walter Mitty, worked as a bank loan officer until he was downsized at the same time that his spouse, Alice, announced her pregnancy. Perry's novel begins with the pair poised at the precipice of financial despair until Alice's sister, Carolyn, and Carolyn's husband, Mid, provide them a rent-free condo (courtesy of a recently deceased aunt) in Florida and the promise of Walter's embarking on a career working for Mid.

As Walter attempts to learn what his new occupation will entail, his brother-in-law's evasive responses raise more questions than answers. Mid's dubious investments that range from his McMansion perched in an otherwise-undeveloped subdivision in the middle of nowhere to his Twice the Ice kiosks that dispense double the ice in venues with half the demand cause Walter to ask, "I'm supposed to be your partner?" "My second," Mid replies.

Walter struggles on the home front too. Alice interprets his fear of fatherhood as rejection of her, of their child and of their marriage. The more he tries to explain his feelings, the greater their schism grows. When he retreats in seemingly safer silence, Alice accuses him of tuning out.

As Walter strives to remain optimistic, Mid's entrepreneurial antics appear increasingly inexplicable and even illegal. Mid and Carolyn battle as Mid's empire starts to implode. Their oldest daughter moves in with Alice and Walter, and just as Alice is attempting to parent her niece, she learns that her pregnancy may be in peril. As Perry's plot gains purchase, his tale negotiates the thin and often permeable terrain that encompasses both comedy and tragedy.

In commenting on his novel, the author has said, "So how does he get there, your reluctant father-to-be? His life blows up, I figured. He moves with no house and few savings and little good idea about what the coming weeks or months might hold. Here's a man who believes in signs and signals, and he moves to Florida, world capital of signs and signals. ? All systems move toward entropy. All pregnant systems sprint toward it. Having a child means never again knowing what comes next, Walter fears - and he's right."

Perry added, "It is fundamentally, immutably difficult to be in the world. It's harder still, and in entirely unfamiliar ways, to be half-responsible for bringing someone else into it. That, at least in part, is what I hope 'Kids These Days' is chasing. I hope it's chasing a few other things, too - flying machines, marriage vows, and grocery store pirates - but if we must make a list, then let's begin right there."

Louisville, Kentucky • Southern Indiana

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Book review | 'Kids These Days'

Critics are raving about the humor in novelist Drew Perry's 'Kids These Days' (Algonquin, 320 pp./$14.95), and it's true that Perry captures ironies and absurdities so well that he's created a page